27 December 2011

60 km to Christmas and Back

This year I decided to ride my bicycle to christmas. The kids were already with their mum down at grandma's house in Roskilde, west of Copenhagen, so I just needed to show up on the 24th, which is christmas in Denmark. Lovely sunshine that day, so I hopped on my Velorbis, wearing my respectable christmas clothes of course, and carrying a bag of presents on the front rack.

The Endomondo app has an option for 'Cycling - Transport' which is great, even though they still call everything you do a 'workout'. I figured that riding 30 kilometres and averaging 20 km/h would get me there in about an hour and a half. It takes an hour to get there with bus/train/walk, so 30 minutes extra was no big deal. On the way out, however, there was a pesky headwind of about 9 metres/second so it took a bit longer. Not to mention the hills. But no matter. It was a lovely ride. On the way home a tailwind of about 11 metres/second pushed me back to Copenhagen.

It was nothing special, just a nice bike ride. If it had been raining, I would have taken the bike on the train.

The route is simple from Copenhagen to Roskilde. It's an almost completely straight line along Roskildevej. Roskildevej was built between 1770-1776 as a replacement for the old King's Way (Kongevej). Kings had various Kongeveje around the country for their use and then there were other roads for everyone else. Roskilde was an important town and home of the national cathedral where most of our kings and queens are buried so building the road was a given. The prime minister, J.H.E. Bernstorff, hired a French road expert in 1764, Jean Rodolphe François Marmillod, to carry out the work on this and other routes including, not surprisingly, Bernstorffvej north of Copenhagen.

Before the motorways were built, Roskildevej was the main artery leading to Copenhagen from the rest of Denmark.

I don't get out of Copenhagen much so it was going to be interesting to see what it was like to ride those 30 km. You know, the quality of the bicycle infrastructure, the wayfinding, etc. So I took some photos.

At left: About five kilometres into the trip. Protected cycle tracks still under my wheels and they are quite wide. There are about 4000 cyclists a day on this section of the route.
At right: Farther out. About 10 km. Wide, protected cycle tracks. I might as well just say now that there were protected cycle tracks on the ENTIRE route. Every single centimetre of it.
At left: Nice and wide.
At right: Shot backwards. Cycle track and loads of buffer space between the cycle track and the road. Nice, since the speed limits were between 60 and 80 km/h.
At left: It was christmas so there wasn't much traffic. The 23rd of December is the big travel day here so there were few cars and few cyclists. Most people at this time of day - 14:00-16:00 - were already at their destination. Nevertheless, there were other cyclists on the route, most with bags of presents.
At right: Many of the neighourhoods in the suburbs were designed in the 1970s and feature bicycle and pedestrian ways that are completely separated from the roads. We'll be getting out to some of these towns in the spring to show you all what they're like. Vis stort kort
The only time the cycle track deviated in form was leading up to a large roundabout located next to a big box store area featuring IKEA and others. Then the cycle track turned into a right-turn lane and if you are heading straight or left, you moved out into this bicycle lane up to the roundabout. Here's the link to the roundabout on Google Maps.

At left: I love the old milestones along the way. 20 km from City Hall Square here.
At right: I hit a stretch of bi-directional cycle track just past the 20 km mark. There was still a cycle track on the opposite side of the street, this bi-directional section was pure A to B due to access to this side of the road and various businessess, etc.
At left: Every time you hit a town - in this case Hedehusene - the cycle track looks like it does in every city in the country.
At right: Here was the narrowest section of cycle track, heading under this old railway bridge.

At left and right: The cycle track was much wider under the motorway.
At left: Five kilometres to go to Roskilde
At right: Roskilde Cathedral. One km to go.
In the Danish national anthem the praises of our hills and valleys are sung. You forget about it in Copenhagen sometimes, but head out of town in any direction and the landscape is rolling. I didn't rise out of the saddle at any point, but the hills surprised me. Long, gradual inclines. You can see the altitudes on the Endomondo links at the top, I think.

The plan was to ride home after christmas evening but when I went out to the bike at 01:00, the front tire was punctured. Fixing a flat at 01:00 in the morning after loads of red wine was not a preferred option. So I slept there and left the next day, after fixing the flat.
At left: On the way home I saw lots of great things, too. Right turns at red lights allowed for cyclists.
At right: Signage for the route number on the national cycling network. Denmark was the first country in the world to develop a national route system for bicycles, thanks to this man.
At left: Confusing road signs for motorists. Me? Just head straight.
At right: Bicycle and pedestrian tunnel through the earthen sound dykes separating the noisy road from a residential neighbourhood.
You can beat this section of the route. Wide and gorgeous cycle tracks under the motorway.
At left: You can ride your bicycle safely to the tractor/farm equipment shop if you like.
At right: Or to any of the big box stores along the entire route.

13 comments:

This is what needs to be included in your presentations about cycling in Copenhagen! Even out in Big Box-land (Taastrup's City2 and Denmark's first IKEA) the bicycle is accommodated, and for not that much additional cost.

Fancy a trip to Hillerød, Hundested or Helsingør some time? IIRC you will find similar bicycle facilities all the way to those cities as well.

I would love to see more of these sorts of posts, to help us see what Danish cycling looks like outside the city core of Copenhagen, and perhaps understand what some of the challenges and successes are outside the city core - clearly, there are lots of successes shown in the photos, but that painted bike lane into the roundabout looks rather unprotected compared to the rest of the infrastructure shown.

I did it! ...well almost. As far as Trekroner (approx. 3km outside of Roskilde town centre). Fierce westerly wind slowed down the outward journey, but it blew me back home.

Thanks for the cycle diary. I would have hopped on a train otherwise. It's great to see these journeys written about - if only to increase awareness that cycling on good cycle lanes outside of Copenhagen is very accessible.

oboe: You are perfectly right that outside of the larger cities and towns, things get a lot more problematic. In some places, traffic is very light, and the roads so narrow that cars can't go very fast (they try to, sometimes anyway) - in others, fast traffic, narrow shoulders, no parrallel routes. Small wonder that many kids in the countryside are brought to school by car (schools that are ever fewer and often far away from home). Cycling in the countryside is a lot more dangerous than in the urban areas. 1/3 of all bicycle accidents happen out there, in spite of a lot less of the total cycling.

Hi to all! Does anyone how much distance or time do the Average cyclist in Denmark cycle? I live about 11 km from my workplace, and not being from Denmark, I find this quite hard to do every day. Do the rest of the people find it normal? Because I see MANY people doing regularly short hops around the city, not more than 3-4 km long. I just want to know if I am being too lazy!

Hi to all! Does anyone how much distance or time do the Average cyclist in Denmark cycle? I live about 11 km from my workplace, and not being from Denmark, I find this quite hard to do every day. Do the rest of the people find it normal? Because I see MANY people doing regularly short hops around the city, not more than 3-4 km long. I just want to know if I am being too lazy!

Kilometres cycled by Copenhageners so far today

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40 years ago Copenhagen was just as car-clogged as anywhere else but now 41% of the population arriving at work or education do so on bicycles, from all over the Metro area. 55% of Copenhageners themselves use bicycles each day. They all use over 1000 km of bicycle lanes in Greater Copenhagen for their journeys. Copenhagenizing is possible anywhere.